The Political Cycle Depicted in George Orwell's Animal Farm

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The novel I choose to read for this assignment was Animal Farm; by George Orwell. This novel discusses how things like greed, wealth, corrupt leaders, and shortsightedness can destroy any chance of a Utopia. These qualities are shown mostly through the pigs, as they start to take control they lose sight of the original 7 seven commandants upon which Animalism was created. As the pigs become more powerful the other animals slowly start becoming less aware of what is really taking place. The pigs are were pretty much destroying whatever shred of animalistic society they had left and replacing it with a cold hard dictatorship in which all the beliefs that made animalism were changed to the pigs advantage. And as animal farm slowly spirals downward, it is the working class animals (particularly Boxer and Clover) that suffer and soon enough become viewed as the protagonists of the novel. This is mainly because they are the animals that we can sympathize with the most, as they become helpless against Napoleon’s murderous followers. But in contrast we see Napoleon and the other pigs as the antagonists of the book, because as the story progresses you see them becoming more like the tyrannical humans they had at a time overthrown. However, they did not start out like this during the revolution, only after they had taken a position of power, were they corrupted by their thirst for more power. The main characters are: Napoleon, the pig who is recognized as the leader of animal farm, he is extremely crafty, vindictive, dictating, and proves himself to be more perfidious then his comrades. Snowball, is an intelligent, passionate pig that constantly fights Napoleon for power. He is very fanatical about the cause of Animalism and only wishes to ... ... middle of paper ... ...hip. Then the people realize something is wrong, then unhappiness reaches a critical point and the government is overthrown or replaced by someone who promises “change”. At this point in the novel the animals are still clueless about how despondent they are and will remain to be so until Jones’s original Manor farm is forgotten and the animals are left to think of another rebellion. Because at this point the only thing that is keeping the animals from knowing the truth is the way Squealer always reminds them that things may seem bad but they are better than they were in Jones’s time. And this is definitely not true, if anything the animals have it even worse than before because now Napoleon and Squealer have confused all of the animals to a point where they are blinded by propaganda, and unable to realize that they are no better off than they were with Mr. Jones.

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